Plaza Baquedano Roundabout, Santiago, Chile, 1960s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Plaza Baquedano Roundabout, Santiago, Chile, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

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Plaza Baquedano Roundabout, Santiago, Chile, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1960–1969

AA-2026-884A63

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The equestrian general up on his white pedestal has seen worse traffic than this, though not by much. Below him a Citroën 2CV eases through the roundabout with the particular smugness of a car designed for French farmers, now pressed into service as urban transport in a South American capital that had adopted half of Europe's automotive castoffs and called it a fleet.

A red Fiat 600 and a boxy blue micro-bus wait their turn, each representing a different theory of how many people should fit in how small a space, all of them apparently correct simultaneously. Pedestrians cross behind the monument with the unhurried confidence of people who have not yet been told that this intersection will one day be a photograph studied for its cars rather than its general.

Nobody in the frame appears to think any of this is remarkable, which is the most reliable sign that decades later it will be.

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